Laika’s First PG-13 Film, Brad Bird’s Neo-Noir and an Alzheimer’s Memoir: Animation’s Revolution Isn’t for Kids

The MPA gave “Wildwood” a PG-13 for “strong fantasy violence/bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material, brief partial nudity and language,” which is a mouthful for any movie and an especially wild one for a stop-motion picture about a girl hunting for her kidnapped baby brother.

It’s the first PG-13 in Laika’s 17 years as a feature studio, and at 140 minutes, it ties the record for the longest English-language animated film ever made. Travis Knight, who runs the Portland, Ore., studio and directed “Wildwood,” didn’t land there by accident. Anyone who remembers how dark the back half of “Kubo and the Two Strings” got probably isn’t shocked he went this far.

Knight is one of the filmmakers taking part in this year’s Pixels and Pencils panel, Variety’s animation directors conversation at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, now in its fifth year. Joining Knight at the event are Brad Bird (“Ray Gunn”), Daniel Chong (“Hoppers”), Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado (“Forgotten Island”) and Leah Nelson (“Tangles”).

The SCAD Savannah Film Festival runs Oct. 24-31.

The panel has turned into a decent crystal ball leading to the Academy Awards. The director of “Flow,” Gints Zilbalodis, participated in 2024 before the little indie feature that could upset the big studios for the animated feature Oscar and last year, four of the eventual five nominees at the 98th Academy Awards, including winner “KPop Demon Hunters,” spoke at the event.

Since “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” won the animated feature Oscar the 95th ceremony, the trophy hasn’t gone back to Disney or Pixar (“The Boy and the Heron,” “Flow” and “KPop” followed), which is a real shift for a category those two studios have owned since “Shrek” took the first trophy in the category in 2002.

But this year, animation’s auteurs are making the movies they want to make.

Bird’s “Ray Gunn” is the easiest place to start, partly because the man has been chasing it since 1996, when a B-52s song and a Henry Mancini tune got tangled in his head and spit out a title. That was three years before “The Iron Giant” bombed at the box office (still a masterpiece, by the way) and then spent the next 25 years becoming the movie an entire generation of dads can’t get through without tearing up.

He’s pitched his new film as “The Maltese Falcon” meets “Buck Rogers.” Sam Rockwell is Raymond Gunn, a gumshoe working a murder in Metropia, a version of 1939 that never happened, where humans and aliens share the same smoky streets. Netflix will release it Dec. 18, after London Film Festival screenings and a limited 70mm run. The PG rating comes with a note about “suggestive material,” which, if you know Bird’s work, tracks. Indeed, the Pixar licensing cash cow and family-friendly adventure “The Incredibles” was about a guy who hates his insurance job and misses his glory days.

Chong’s “Hoppers” is the on the list our nieces and nephews have already watched twice on Disney+. The Pixar original opened to $46 million in March, the best start for an original since “Coco” in 2017 and cleared $500 million worldwide in about five weeks, which felt like the whole studio exhaling after “Elemental” and “Elio” stumbled out of the gate. Chong, who created “We Bare Bears” for Cartoon Network, made his feature directing debut with the story of Mabel (Piper Curda), a college student who uploads her mind into a robot beaver so she can talk to animals and keep developers from bulldozing their forest.

It’s a family movie, sure. It’s also about habitat loss and how much people are willing to give up to stop it, and there’s a robot face removal scene that has reportedly sent some of the younger audience members out to the lobby. Timely, no?

Crawford was on our very first panel back in 2022 with “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” the Oscar-nominated sequel nobody asked for that turned out to be a pretty frank movie about a cat who’s afraid to die. And people loved it. Mercado, his best friend in real life, co-directed that one too and their friendship, which goes back to “Kung Fu Panda 2,” is the seed of “Forgotten Island.”

In the film, Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano) grew up together in the Philippines in the 1990s and are about to be pulled apart, with Raissa off to Caltech and Jo staying home. Then they get stuck in Nakali, a place out of Philippine folklore that eats memories and if they don’t find a way out, they’ll forget each other entirely. You don’t need to have been 18 years old in Manila in the 1990s to feel that one. So seeing DreamWorks throw this kind of muscle behind a Filipino story with universal appeal means something.

As for Laika, the studio is five for five in animated feature nominations, from “Coraline” to “Missing Link” and zero for five in wins, although “Missing Link” beat “Toy Story 4” and “Frozen II” at the Golden Globes.
Knight, who got his own nomination for “Kubo,” directs the Chris Butler adaptation of Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis’ 2011 novel. In the stop-motion feature, Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) goes into the forbidden woods outside Portland after her brother is taken and stumbles into a war. The Laika crew built 136 sets and 231 puppets to get her there. Fathom releases “Wildwood” on Oct. 23, the day before Savannah kicks off.

Then there’s “Tangles,” which isn’t pretending to be anything other than a movie for adults. Nelson, a first-time feature director, wrote it with Sarah Leavitt, adapting Leavitt’s graphic memoir about her mother’s Alzheimer’s in the late 1990s. Abbi Jacobson voices Sarah, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays her mom and is among the producers with Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen.

It got a seven-minute ovation at Cannes before Independent Film Company picked it up, and the charcoal-heavy animation does something with memory that live action could not pull off. The jokes are there early but the tears come fast and furious by credits roll.

Both “Tangles” and “Wildwood” are also going drama at the Golden Globes, where animated titles have usually defaulted to comedy. It’s category paperwork, technically, but it says a lot about how these teams want their films seen.

None of this is exactly new, by the way. “Persepolis” and “Anomalisa” were nominated by the Oscars years ago, and Japanese studios have been making animation for grown-ups for as long as we’ve been watching movies. Only three animated films, “Beauty and the Beast,” “Up” and “Toy Story 3,” have ever been nominated for best picture and the last of those was 15 years ago. What feels different in 2026 is the confidence. Nobody on this panel seems to be asking whether their story is “allowed” to be animated.

They grew up on Saturday morning cartoons. Now they’re making them for Saturday night.

This week’s updated predictions are below.

(In alphabetical order. Ranked choices are on each individual category page)

Best Picture
“Artificial” (Neon)
“The Debut” (A24)
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“The Invite” (A24)
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)
“Wildwood” (Laika)
“You Can See Everything” (A24)

Director
Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, “La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, “You Can See Everything” (A24)
Christopher Nolan, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Denis Villeneuve, “Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
Olivia Wilde, “The Invite” (A24)

Actor
Matt Damon, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
John Malkovich, “Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures) ***
Pedro Pascal, “Behemoth!” (Searchlight Pictures)
Andrew Scott, “Elsinore” (Focus Features)
John Turturro, “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” (Sony Pictures Classics)

Actress
Marion Bailey, “Tender Loving Care” (Bleecker Street)
Sandra Hüller, “Rose” (Mubi)
Julianne Moore, “The Debut” (A24) ***
Inde Navarrette, “Obsession” (Focus Features)
Olivia Wilde, “The Invite” (A24)

Supporting Actor
Andrew Garfield, “Artificial” (Neon) ***
Paul Giamatti, “The Debut” (A24)
Guitarricadelafuente, “La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
John Leguizamo, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Sam Rockwell, “Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures)

Supporting Actress
Penélope Cruz, “The Invite” (A24)
Anne Hathaway, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
Sandra Hüller, “Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
Samantha Morton, “The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
Amanda Seyfried, “You Can See Everything” (A24)

Original Screenplay
“Artificial” (Neon) — Simon Rich
“Club Kid” (A24) — Jordan Firstman
“The Debut” (A24) — Jesse Eisenberg
“Tender Loving Care” (Bleecker Street) — Mike Leigh
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures) — Martin McDonagh ***

Adapted Screenplay
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) — Brian K. Vaughan, Denis Villeneuve
“The Invite” (A24) — Rashida Jones and Will McCormack ***
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix) — Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo, Alberto Conejero
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) — Christopher Nolan
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios) — Drew Goddard

Casting
“Being Heumann” (Apple Original Films) — Adam Caldwell and Bernard Telsey
“Fjord” (Neon) — Hannah Chocron Foldøy
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix) — Eva Leira and Yolanda Serrano
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) — John Papsidera ***
“Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight Pictures) — Sarah Finn

Animated Feature
“Hoppers” (Pixar) — Daniel Chong and Nicole Paradis Grindle
“Ray Gunn” (Netflix) — Brad Bird, John Lasseter, Lisa Beroud, David Ellison and Dana Goldberg
“Tangles” (Independent Film Company) — Leah Nelson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lauren Miller Rogen, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
“Toy Story 5” (Pixar) — Andrew Stanton, Lindsey Collins and Jessica Choi
“Wildwood” (Laika) — Travis Knight and Sam Wilson ***

Production Design
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Werwulf” (Focus Features)

Cinematography
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“You Can See Everything” (A24)

Costume Design
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“Michael” (Lionsgate)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
“Sense and Sensibility” (Focus Features)

Film Editing
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“The Invite” (A24)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“You Can See Everything” (A24)

Makeup and Hairstyling
“Digger” (Warner Bros.)
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“Michael” (Lionsgate)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures)
“Wicker” (Black Bear Pictures)

Sound
“Behemoth!” (Searchlight Pictures)
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.)
“The Mosquito Bowl” (Netflix)
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) ***
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)

Visual Effects
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) ***
“Godzilla Minus Zero” (GKids)
“Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM Studios)
“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” (Sony Pictures)
“Wildwood” (Laika)

Original Score
“Artificial” (Neon) — Damon Albarn
“Behemoth!” (Searchlight Pictures) — The Behemoth! Collective
“Dune: Part Three” (Warner Bros.) — Hans Zimmer
“The Odyssey” (Universal Pictures) — Ludwig Göransson ***
“Wildwood” (Laika) — Dario Marianelli

Original Song
“This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn’t Spit Me Out)” from “The Debut” (A24) ***
“La Nieve” from “La Bola Negra” (Netflix)
“Let Me Sell You a Dream” from “Musk” (Bleecker Street)
“I Knew It, I Knew You” from “Toy Story 5” (Pixar)
“The Better Part of Bravery” from “Wildwood” (Laika)

Documentary Feature
“American Doctor” (Watermelon Pictures)
“Everest: The Other Side” (National Geographic)
“Naza” (The Guardian and MK2)
“Once Upon a Time in Harlem” (Neon) ***
“Rehearsals for a Revolution” (Sony Pictures Classics)

International Feature
“Fjord” from Romania (Neon)
“La Bola Negra” from Spain (Netflix) ***
“Minotaur” from France (Mubi)
“Possible Love” from South Korea (Netflix)
“Woman Unknown” from Denmark (U.S. Distributor TBD)